Steve Bisson/Savannah Morning News Michael Chaney, SCAD professor of film and television sits with co-producers Dallas Brennan Rexer, center, and Christy Turlington Burns in a question and answer session at the Lucas Theatre.

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Christy Turlington Burns is best known for her career as a supermodel.

Her face has graced innumerable magazine covers, and for 20 years, Turlington Burns was the image of Calvin Klein. What is not as well known is that behind the camera, she is a philanthropist and activist determined to make life better for others.

In honor of her mother, who was born in El Salvador, Turlington Burns has been involved in the efforts to rebuild post-war El Salvador since the early 1990s. In honor of her father, who died of lung cancer in 1997, she has been involved in preventative health care, including smoking prevention and cessation.

But her biggest mission came about because of Turlington Burns’ own experience, when shesuffered a serious complication — post-partum hemorrhage — after the birth of her daughter in 2003. She wondered what happened to women who suffer PPH with no health care available.

As a result, she created a documentary film, “No Woman, No Cry,” about the global state of maternal health, which was screened Monday at the 15th annual Savannah Film Festival.

In conjunction with the film, Turlington Burns created Every Mother Counts, a campaign to increase education and support for maternal mortality reduction on a global basis. Not only has she earned a master’s degree in public health, but she has also trained and run in marathons to raise awareness.

Shockingly, more than 500,000 women die in childbirth every year, and 90 percent of those deaths are preventable. Turlington Burns filmed the stories of at-risk pregnant women in a remote Maasai tribe in Tanzania, a slum of Bangladesh, a post-abortion care ward in Guatemala and a prenatal clinic in the United States.

With the encouragement of her husband, actor/filmmaker Edward Burns, Turlington Burns made the film and continues to work for the cause.

“I’ve gone back to each country numerous times to screen it,” she said.

While in each country, Turlington Burns has sought out the women whose stories she told to see how they are doing. “Everyone is doing fairly well,” she said.

The producer, Dallas Brennan Rexer, was particularly touched by the story of a young girl who appears only briefly in the film, but made a lasting impression on the film crew.

“It was in Tanzania,” Brennan Rexer said. “She was out on the roadside and she was so young. She knew she needed help, but she had no idea where to go.”

The girl’s boyfriend had abandoned her when she became pregnant, and her father abandoned the family out of anger at the mother for allowing their daughter to become pregnant.

On her return to Tanzania, Turlington Burns learned the girl has been admitted to a vocational program with plans to become a teacher and her father has come home. Best of all, the unwanted baby is now adored by everyone in the family.

Girls between 15 and 19 are particularly vulnerable. Turlington Burns said 60 percent of all maternal deaths fall in that age group, causing devastation to entire families.

“It’s not just the girls, the women,” she said. “It’s the people who love them we have to advocate for.”